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goryani

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  1. I don't see other problems besides selecting the target of a mission. Do you follow the SW:R design of requiring the source and destination to both be visible before starting a command? Breaking that design rule will let you fix the problem of missions against other units. If that isn't feasible, then perhaps two sidebars will suffice. One sidebar can be for friendly planets while the second sidebar can be for enemy/neutral planets. I can't think of any mission in which you need sidebars for two friendly planets or for two enemy/neutral planets. Looks like a good iteration. I'm assuming that the appropriate icon isn't visible until a production building exists. What type of hover? I originally said click or hover can open the production windows, but I now think that hovering won't end up working so well. "Instant open on hover" will be too much like whack-a-mole. Delayed hover probably won't be an improvement over simple clicking. Conditional hovering will be fantastic in some situations, like choosing the target of a mission, but may introduce too much complexity. Other thoughts: The new troop icons are nice - better visibility and contrast. What are the white lines going from planet to planet or from planet to UI element? I notice you don't have the energy/mine bars under the planets. Is that because you don't want them or because they aren't implemented yet?
  2. Like many others, I find some aspects of SW:R's original design to be less than ideal. Some aspects are oft repeated (click fest) but not often in great detail (11 clicks vs. 3 clicks). Other aspects are more nebulous (too many windows) and offering no concrete alternatives. I was attempting to not only share my opinion, but to do so in a manner that gives alternatives. In short, I was trying to give constructive criticism rather than criticism. If I came across as arrogant, I apologize. At the risk of sounding even more arrogant, I respectfully disagree with your characterization that my ideas are pure impossibilities. Getting down to a magical 2 clicks to build a ship may require design decisions you aren't comfortable with or programming you aren't yet familiar with, but it is possible. Having a clickable shipyard icon around the planet will save several interactions. Letting hotkeys such as 'X' select the X-Wing will save several interactions. Those two suggestions will cut the number of interactions in half and add very little to the overall complexity. Other shortcuts can be made to further reduce the number of interactions but may involve more complex coding (highlighted/flashing/pulsing/situational icons) or design decisions you may not like (pressing the 'X' hotkey as above will not only select the X-Wing but also press the build button). The size of the galaxy will determine if you can get down to the 2-3 range as opposed to the 4-5 range without on-Hover programming trickery. The window size comment I made was brusque and lacking enough detail to be useful. I will join you in flogging myself for my poor execution. I told you to make your windows smaller but I didn't mention the secret recipe for doing so. I don't have a problem with the size of the elements in your UI. I have a problem with SW:R including most of those elements in the first place. Look at the Production Dialog window. There are only 2 critical elements in that window: the unit selector and the quantity selector. Even the quantity selector is optional if you really think about it. That entire window exists to give a home to an 18 pixel by 200 pixel unit selector. Both selectors plus a few convenient, small, square buttons (close, build, more info) will fit into something the size of the 160x125 pixel black box in the Coruscant Build Dialog window. The elements of the old Production Dialog window no longer in the new window will be moved to a newly created "More Info" window that appears when the More Info button is pressed and will look much like it does now. Other windows can undergo similar scrutiny. In SW:R, the Production Dialog window does not appear until you right click or double click on the appropriate icon on the Coruscant Build Dialog window. In other words, the Coruscant Build Dialog window exists to hold the buttons that open the various Production Dialog windows. If you follow the suggestion of changing those buttons into icons around the planet on the main map, the Coruscant Build Dialog window can be completely revamped if not removed entirely. The mines and refineries tab can be accessed through the pez icons. The important aspects of the overview tab (destination and a progress bar) are both small enough to be placed on the individual compact Production Dialog window. Other info such as the Jedi tab (I'm curious!) or the rest of the info on the Overview tab can still be accessed through the normal method of double clicking on the planet icon.
  3. I see two problems with your recent screen shot and this new idea: 1. All the windows and their contents lead me to believe this design is as much a click fest as the original. 2. The windows are about 10 times larger than they need to be. In the original game, if I wanted to build something in a construction yard, I took the following actions: click on Galactic Information Display Icon hover over Manufacturing to enable a popout menu click Idle Construction Yards to display some information icons on the game map click on a sector where one of the information icons was located click on the manufacturing plant icon next to the planet where one of the information icons was located right click on the "Facilities Under Construction" area of the newly opened window click build click on the "Items to Build" arrow icon click-n-drag the scroll bar to move the scrolling window to the desired location click the building you want built click on the "Done" checkmark Getting the information icons to display on the map should take 1 click or hotkey, not 3. If you can display an informational icon, you can click the informational icon to go straight to the build window (1 click instead of 4) A hotkey system will let you press one button to choose which building to build (1 button press instead of 3 clicks) The "Done" checkmark is superfluous and should be eliminated or disabled as a user option. The original 11 button click fest can be reduced to a svelte 2 or 3. Issues such as number of buildings to build and destination location still exist, so not all actions will take 3 button presses, but saving 8 or more per action is badly needed. Your design can still reach the magical 2 or 3 clicks. For starters, shrink the size of the windows. A Lot. Get the "Production Dialog" window down to the size of a black box in the "Coruscant Build Dialog" window. It can be done. The compact windows will give you extreme flexibility in UI design. It will be worth it. Next, give each window easy access. One click/button to open. One click/button to close. No unnecessary clicks/buttons to complete the dialogs. If Corellia has a shipyard, show a tiny shipyard icon somewhere on the star map next to the planet. There is enough dead space. Clicking or hovering over that icon will open up the shipyard production "window." I use window loosely because it will be much much smaller than it is currently. It may help to think of it as a popup rather than a window. This window/popup will be about the same size as a black box in the "Coruscant Build Dialog" window is now. As I said earlier, it should appear when clicking on the little shipyard icon next to a planet and disappear when you finish the build dialog or move/click your mouse off the popup. The contents of the popup should be mostly controllable through keyboard shortcuts (destination is the only exception). If you don't want to have the popup appear over the planet, you can have it appear in some corner instead, but having it appear over the planet makes it much easier to tell which planet the production popup belongs to.
  4. Under what circumstances would you want to see an individual unit? The battle simulator didn't let you manage individual squadrons, only groups of squadrons. Combat calculations are based on the number of fighters, not the number of squadrons. You can safely replace "holds 3 fighter squadrons" with "holds 36 fighters" and it will make no difference during combat. Altering the combat and production calculations involve a simple divide or multiply by 12 to convert from squadron to fighter values. If you were staying faithful to the SW:R battle sim, then you don't need to keep track of squadrons at all, simply the number of fighters. If you no longer need to keep track of squadrons, then you eliminate the damaged squadron. Without damaged squadrons, you have no reason not to use icon:number representation. However, if you are redesigning the battle sim, you have much more important things to worry about than damaged units. Just ditch them entirely. The undamaged units can all be represented in icon:number fashion In the original SW:R, I can think of two instances when an individual unit mattered: 1. moving a specific unit elsewhere 2. targeting a specific unit for sabotage A bit more detail: move 1:x undamaged, stationary units move 1:x damaged, stationary units move 1:x non-stationary units is not possible target a specific undamaged, stationary unit target a specific damaged, stationary unit target a specific non-stationary unit is not possible Let's start with the sabotage targeting: I've always hated having to choose specific troop to sabotage. If I could recode the game, I would let sabotage missions choose to sabotage any X-Wing squadron rather than a specific X-Wing squadron. In fact, I would rather let my saboteurs choose any fighter squadron, even at random, to target over having to choose a specific unit. Making this change eliminates the need to show specific units for targeted missions. Moving units: Undamaged units are commodities. One is as good as another. It doesn't matter which one you select, as long as you select one. It doesn't matter which 10 you select, as long as you select 10. Since they are commodities, stack them. Games that use stacks have the well known click, shift-click, and control-click mechanisms to select a variable number, all, or single item from a stack of items. As others have said, you could use the icon:number representation and the clicking mechanisms for selection. If you must include damaged units, then damaged units could have their own icon and treated separately, unstacked. For the most part, treating damaged units as a special case will allow you to continue to use damaged units while still reducing UI clutter. The major issue then is how to select some number of undamaged units and damaged units for the same move operation. TL;DR version: eliminate damaged fighter squadrons - either simply eliminate them or refactor everything to use fighters instead of squadrons use icon:number representation in all UI views use click, shift-click and control-click mechanisms for selecting some/all/one units in a stack of units let sabotage missions try to sabotage a generic unit instead of a specific unit
  5. This is probably a strange first post on these forums, but oh well. It is also bumping an older post, but I hope the information helps someone as it has helped me. The same techniques used to convert 09 01 HEXA to 265 will also convert 65 2F into 12133. The simple version: 09 hex = 9 dec 01 hex = 1 dec 1*256 + 9 = 265 65 hex = 101 dec 2f hex = 47 dec 47*256 + 101 = 12133 Not so simple version: Big Endian and Little Endian are not the same. Also, a computer can use one Endian order for bit representation and another Endian order for byte or word representation. The computer says 09 01 and 65 2f while humans will understand it better as 01 09 and 2f 65. Use your hex editor to look at textstra.dll. Look around address 130,256 decimal (01FCD0 Hex) for the Coruscant text string. Many hex editors will show Coruscant as "C.o.r.u.s.c.a.n.t." because of the same issue (periods or dots represent the NULL character, your hex editor may show it as a different symbol, such as @ or #). The utilities found on SWRebellion.com all seem to understand the data formats properly, but most hex editors do not, at least not with default options. I'd be thrilled if anyone knows of a hex editor that will correctly show the Coruscant text string and 12133 hex equivalent. P.S. I still love the game, despite its age. I'm thrilled to find this site appear in a google search. I appreciate the hard work of all those who came before. Thank you.

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